The invention concerns a method and device for the calibration (or “electronic adjustment”) of a display unit, comprising a display and autostereoscopic adapter disc, particularly provided for detachable mounting to the display. The invention furthermore concerns a method and a device for the generation or playback of 3D images by means of said display unit comprising an autostereoscopic adapter disc and display. The invention finally concerns an autostereoscopic adapter disc that is especially suitable for the use with these methods and devices.
Adapter discs of this type are known, for example, in the form of lenticular screen discs, lenticular discs, liquid lense discs or nano-lense discs that generally are comprised of layers of multiple individual discs and are placed on the screen surface of a display. Such a display unit comprised of an adapter disc and a display can be used to provide each eye of a viewer with a different perspective without any visual aid (for example polarization glasses or similar objects) to produce a three-dimensional (3D) image effect.
The embodiment of the adapter disc in particular can be such that according to FIG. 1 several viewers B1 . . . Bn can simultaneously see a three-dimensional (3D) image with spatial depth from different angles or positions and distances, respectively, from the system DA comprised of adapter disc and display. Such systems therefore are also called multiview systems.
An adapter disc for the detachable mounting to the screen surface of a (conventional) display by means of a simple fixing device is preferred.
One advantage of such detachable adapter discs is that the display can be used in a customary manner for common applications such as word processing, for example, and, if required, three-dimensional viewing of corresponding images or image sequences after the adapter disc is put in place is possible. Thus customary displays can be upgraded for three-dimensional viewing by means of the adapter disc so that multifunctional displays can be realized in a simple manner.
However, one common problem in particular with multiview systems is that there is insufficiently exact alignment between the optical and physical features of the display and the optical and physical features of the attached adapter disc since the adapter disc, due to its detachable mounting on the display, cannot be positioned on the display with the required degree of accuracy and reproducibility.
DE 102 52 830 B3 describes a detachable autostereoscopic adapter in the form of a removable lenticular screen disc for a flat screen which includes an automatic calibration of the adapter on the display by means of an electronic sensor device.
However, this solution generally is not considered to be very efficient since either the sensor device does not work accurately enough due to external influences or is relatively expensive, which results in corresponding cost disadvantages.
It is desirable to provide a method and a device for calibrating a display unit, comprising a display and an autostereoscopic adapter disc, particularly provided for detachable mounting on the screen surface of the display, which reliably adjusts and aligns the optical or physical features of the display with the optical and physical features of the attached adapter disc depending on the actual relative positioning between the two.
It is also desirable to provide a method and a device for generating or playing back, respectively, 3D images by means of a display unit as described above.
Finally, it is desirable to provide an adapter disc that is especially suitable for application to these methods and devices.
One advantage of solutions according to aspects of the present invention is that an optimal three-dimensional (3D) image playback can be achieved in a relatively simple manner, as it is customarily possible only with autostereoscopic adapter discs that are permanently mounted on the surface of the display by the manufacturer.
The sub-claims contain further advantageous developments of aspects of the invention.